thinkbroadband

Number of LLU lines still rising
Friday 01 September 2006 12:29:00 by
Andrew Ferguson

The monthly update from the Office of the Telecoms Adjudicator has been published, which shows that the UK now has in excess of 735,000 LLU lines. The total in the previous month was 673,000. The
full report can be found on www.offta.org.uk.

The report raises concerns about issues like Right First Time delivery, which can be seen on our forums with the number of people migrated onto an LLU platform by their provider who subsequently
have issues with their connection. Sometimes these issues are LLU based e.g. to do with the work carried out by Openreach or the LLU providers own kit, but very often it is the teething problems
of moving from a fixed speed to a rate adaptive service. For many the rate adaptive up to 8Mbps ADSL services work well, but most seem to suffer a few more disconnections than is normal in the
first day or so. Where service providers are moving customers in bulk to an LLU platform this can result in people reporting faults when its just bedding in issues, as they may not have been
aware of the switch over date.

This week has seen a lot of editorial features in the press and online about 'free' broadband and the issues surrounding it, one area we feel needs to be looked at is providers switching the
wholesale provider on a customers line. It is hard to judge how many are leaving providers due to dissatisfaction after being switched from an IPStream to an LLU based service, but it appears
that if the customer did not know it was happening they are more likely to want to switchback, or will move to another provider. Other than the big names in the LLU arena like, AOL, Bulldog, Be,
Orange, Sky, Talk Talk and UK Online, most (but not all) providers are using a wholesale LLU service, with Tiscali Wholesale being the most common partner at present.

We think it would be good customer relations to ask customers whether they want to switch to a LLU service or not, and equally there are some who would rather stay on their fixed speed services
that are stable but a bit slow, rather than push their lines capabilities to its maximum using rate adaptive up to 8Mbps ADSL.

For those signing up to the Sky Broadband service, or are already using it, we now have a dedicated forum section you can use, here.